May 21 (Bloomberg) -- Tanzania plans to boost cargo volumes
by 80 percent over the next two years at the Dar es Salaam Port
by adding railway links and upgrading facilities to improve
efficiency, Transport Minister Harrison Mwakyembe said.

The port is expected to handle 18 million metric tons of
cargo by 2015, compared with as much as 10 million tons this
year, Mwakyembe said in an interview today in Dar es Salaam, the
country’s commercial capital.

“I am 100 percent sure we will reach 18 million tons by
2015,” he said. “The government is committed to taking serious
measures to improving the port.”

Dar es Salaam is the fourth-largest container port on
Africa’s eastern seaboard after Durban in South Africa, Mombasa
in Kenya and the port of Djibouti, according to the
International Association of Ports and Harbors’ website.
Tanzania could generate $1.8 billion of additional annual
revenue if efficiency levels were improved to match Mombasa,
Jacques Morisset, lead economist for the World Bank in Tanzania,
Burundi and Uganda, told reporters today in Dar es Salaam.

The port currently generates average revenue of 41 billion
shillings ($25 million) a month, according to Mwakyembe.

About 90 percent of Tanzania’s international trade goes
through Dar es Salaam port, Morisset said. Because of
inefficiencies, trade costs are 60 percent higher between
Tanzania and China than between Brazil and China, where the
distance is almost double.

Tariff Costs

Comparing the Dar es Salaam port to Mombasa, delays and
additional monetary costs are equivalent to a tariff of 22
percent on container imports and about 5 percent on bulk
imports, Morisset said.

Some of the delays include the need for shipping companies
to queue before anchoring, high fees, ineffective storage tariff
structures, corruption and an unofficial tariff barrier that
protects local producers, according to a report released by the
World Bank today. Ninety-six percent of senior managers at mid-size companies surveyed by KPMG LLP and the World Bank said
their businesses were affected by the port’s poor performance,
the report said.

“There is a bottleneck that is real,” Philippe Dongier,
the World Bank country director, said in Dar es Salaam. “To
reduce this bottleneck, we need to make the Dar port a more
efficient gateway to the region. This could have a significant
impact on the Tanzanian economy.”